quote:To be fair, the numbers suggest there is plenty of racial self-selection in black Americans' friend networks too. But focusing solely on black-white relations, there's a pretty big difference between having only one member of a given race in your friend network, and having eight of them.
In fact, PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have "entirely white social networks without any minority presence." The same holds true for slightly less than two thirds of black Americans.
quote:In a 100-friend scenario, the average white person has 91 white friends; one each of black, Latino, Asian, mixed race, and other races; and three friends of unknown race. The average black person, on the other hand, has 83 black friends, eight white friends, two Latino friends, zero Asian friends, three mixed race friends, one other race friend, and four friends of unknown race.
posted
I do not have a Jamaican friend, and I didn't go out of my way to move in next to Jamaican neighbors.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Growing up in the Chicago area, my friends were of White, Black, Latino, Arab, Indian, Chinese, and Korean descent that I can think of off the top of my head. there were probably other races/ethnicities in there as well that I don't know simply becuz as a topic it never came up. We went to school together, we were on sports teams together, we did the musicals, variety shows, and dance shows together. It just wasn't an issue. But it was also probably a function of where I lived.
Now I live in the Salt Lake City area (which is something like 90% white), and while my neighbors are Latino, and my nieces are mixed-race.... can't say that I have any "current" friends of a different race anymore. There just aren't all that many people of other races around for me to develop such friendships with.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I love the moronic implied causality in this piece...
Isn't it likely that people of color would pick a mixed race area to live? Isn't it more likely that people will group together based on a common culture, that if there's a large number of disparate groups they'll integrate where they're most similar?
But no ... it's all because the whites are racist. Cool.
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I love the moronic implied causality in this piece...
Isn't it likely that people of color would pick a mixed race area to live? Isn't it more likely that people will group together based on a common culture, that if there's a large number of disparate groups they'll integrate where they're most similar?
But no ... it's all because the whites are racist. Cool.
Do you have cataloged instances of Black Flight? Because it's a pretty common phenomenon amongst whites. And it happens long before 30-40% of the neighborhood stops being white.
Thing is, it's not that whites are notable for racism. Racism penetrates every single ethnicity. What matters is how white people are expressing racism and how do we stop that. Because it's unarguably damaging to society for racism to prevail or be fostered.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I love the moronic implied causality in this piece...
Isn't it likely that people of color would pick a mixed race area to live? Isn't it more likely that people will group together based on a common culture, that if there's a large number of disparate groups they'll integrate where they're most similar?
But no ... it's all because the whites are racist. Cool.
Wow dude. Please quote the part that says it's "all because the whites are racist" as opposed to your subtle analysis.
In reality, the article does a good job mentioning the factors you are pretending they didn't mention in favor of "whites are bad mmkay".
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I love the moronic implied causality in this piece...
Isn't it likely that people of color would pick a mixed race area to live? Isn't it more likely that people will group together based on a common culture, that if there's a large number of disparate groups they'll integrate where they're most similar?
But no ... it's all because the whites are racist. Cool.
But, yeah. Look at San Diego and Tucson. There are parts of town that are 99% Hispanic. There are parts of town that are 95% white. And there are multicultural areas. - I will only look in the white or multicultural areas. - A person of color might have a similar view.
Is it because I'm a racist? Or is it that I want to shop at Target and have an English speaker cut my hair?
<shrug>
Side note: I did live in a predominantly Hispanic area of San Diego. It gets somewhat annoying when nobody in food service can speak English, when nobody at a hair salon can do a "white haircut".
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: Seriously scifibum? The graphic and title are trolling for readers. Black people have ethnic friends, but white people don't.
It may be sensationalism to catch readers. But that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
You're drawing the wrong conclusions from it. It's not about blacks having more black friends than whites do, that's obvious and perfectly normal. The point is that blacks have more WHITE friends than whites have black friends.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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posted
Well yes, there are roughly 6 white people for every black person in the US (72.4% vs 12.6%), so if each white person had as many black friends as black people had white, that would be... statistically improbable? You'd basically need a small group of black people with an insanely high number of white friends mixed with a large group of black people with *no* white friends to make it work.
I think the point is more about the lack of friendship between races in general. In an ideal, evenly distributed population, 12 out of 100 white friends would be black and 72 out of 100 black friends would be white. That's obviously not happening.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: Seriously scifibum? The graphic and title are trolling for readers. Black people have ethnic friends, but white people don't.
It may be sensationalism to catch readers. But that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
The title is a fact. Sure, they are trying to get attention. But it's a fact supported by research. Why are you acting like this fact is an accusation against you? You're inferring something that isn't there.
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posted
Interesting. I just did the math on myself. If I eliminate family members, I have 85 "friends" on facebook. 11 of those are minorities (mostly black but a couple of asians thrown in). That comes out to 12.9%.
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I don't diagree with the point that there's a massive problem with race relations, just pointing out that "The point is that blacks have more WHITE friends than whites have black friends." is obviously *not* the point, and indeed, anything other than that would be illogical for hopefully obvious reasons.
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: No, I'm inferring that they're dissing (can I still use that term?) white people as racists to get people to read the article.
Oh, wait, white people might not be that racist? There might be more to the article than that? Imagine that.
The Washington Post should be more responsible. It isn't Buzzfeed.
The article doesn't say "white people are racist."
Do you also feel attacked by articles that point out that males make more money than females, on average?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
If you actually read the article, it talks about those statistical issues and isn't trying to use it as an example of racism but as one of many reasons for problems in race relations. Take this paragraph for instance:
quote: The numbers above offer insight into why so many whites have expressed bafflement over protesters' responses to the shooting of Michael Brown. The history between many black communities and the police forces that serve them is long, complicated, often violent and characterized by an extreme imbalance of power. But as Robert Jones notes, most whites are not "socially positioned" to understand this history -- simply because they know few people who've experienced it.
I would agree with this. As a white man that grew up in a nearly all white neighborhood and went to nearly all white schools, these sorts of things baffled me because I never saw it. I couldn't understand why blacks were always complaining about racism because I wasn't seeing the same things they were seeing and experiencing. In the last ten years or so I have acquired several black friends, seen some of the things they have had to endure, talked to them about these issues and come to realize that they have a point. Unfortunately as this article points out, 75% of the white population can't get this perspective because they have so few black friends.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: No, it doesn't say that. But it implies it in the title and the graphic.
What do you want, a title that explicitly rules out racism as a possible factor in the simple fact being presented?
Note: It's one factor. No doubt about it. The article covers other factors as well, and doesn't really focus on racism as a major factor.
It's an interesting fact, and it relates to important social issues. I don't see any good reason we can't confront that fact directly, instead of having it softened or buried somehow.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Do you also feel attacked by articles that point out that males make more money than females, on average?
The article implies that it's a matter of choice to have only white friends.
Do people not choose where to live or go to college or work? Do they not choose who to strike up conversations with? Of course people make choices that affect how this works out. Come on.
quote:Do men choose for women to make less money?
Stupid analogy.
It's another fact that often engenders knee jerk defensive reactions. But it's a fact, and it relates to important social issues. It's a fact we should be willing to confront and examine, just like the other fact that you are upset about being confronted with.
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posted
If the actual headline were as blatantly sensational as you are suggesting you wouldn't have to make up a truly sensational headline to try to make your point.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Your first objection was "moronic causality", which as far as I can tell you imagined, since the sorts of causes you mentioned that should have been accounted for were accounted for. You said the article blames the situation entirely on racism, which isn't true.
What headline would you have preferred?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Back to the actual discussion, I think that the data in this article misses the real point. Modern migration patterns are affected by a lot of factors. I would argue that socio-economic forces have a lot more impact than race does.
I'd imagine that these numbers skew significantly depending on what part of the country you live in. Growing up in Utah, I'd always figured that racism was practically dead. But in my time in the military, I quickly realized that it wasn't the case.
It's strange. I'd like to see some models or infographics that show how patterns of social change ripple through the populace, based on region. We've seen changing attitudes toward homosexuality and race over the last several decades. But there are still some regions where change happens much slower, if at all.
I do find it odd that some of the most diverse places are also some of the racist holdouts. I've never seen anywhere as racially divided as the American South (Louisiana, Mississippi). Parts of California are pretty bad too.
But I don't think it's about integration only, because Hawaii is actually pretty racially progressive.
I read an article a few years back about how couples only argue about money if they make less than $85 k per year. Couples who exceeded this income threshold were found to be happier. I'd bet money that data would support that the most racist areas in the country are also the poorest. People tend to blame the "other" when they have problems. Tucson and Biloxi are pretty racist, while San Jose and Seattle aren't. Money and criminal subculture might both be pretty big determinants.
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Your first objection was "moronic causality", which as far as I can tell you imagined, since the sorts of causes you mentioned that should have been accounted for were accounted for. You said the article blames the situation entirely on racism, which isn't true.
Part of the article does blame it on racism, the graphic and headline. You're misquoting me.
How am I misquoting you?
How does the headline blame racism?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Blacks have ten times as many black friends as white friends. But white Americans have an astonishing 91 times as many white friends as black friends.
The fact that the author was astonished by this fact demonstrates he lacks a grasp of basic statistics. In fact, the quoted friendship statistics for black Americans are much more unlikely/surprising than those for white Americans, given the underlying population (a point Dogbreath made earlier).
There's a statistical tool called the information divergence, that measures how far apart distributions are from each other. It has nice properties for identifying how likely a set of observations are to have been generated from a particular statistical distribution. Broadly, the divergence can be thought of the distance between an observed distribution and an ideal distribution in probability space. Simplifying the distributions shown in the chart to binary counts of "friends of my race/friends not of my race" and computing the divergence to the population-level distributions yields a divergence of 0.12 for the friendships of whites, but 0.61 for blacks. The statistics for black friendships are 5x more surprising than those for white friendships.
Admittedly, the article isn't really about that. And I think the broader point that by having more diverse social networks black people are exposed to more perspectives is valid*. But the framing is not only biased, it's quantifiably wrong.
*I think that, even more than having diverse social ties, simply being a minority almost automatically causes one to be aware of the majority perspective in a non-symmetric way. You're exposed to it in all sorts of ways that aren't captured by the 'friendship' metric (newspapers, school curricula, etc.)
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:The fact that the author was astonished by this fact demonstrates he lacks a grasp of basic statistics.
It's not an academic article though, it's talking in simple terms about what is a pretty astonishing disparity even if statistically it makes sense.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Look, you can either complain about over-dramatics and arguing for arguing's sake, or you can post the way you're posting, Herblay. You can't do both.
Not without being a hypocrite anyway.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Interesting. I just did the math on myself. If I eliminate family members, I have 85 "friends" on Facebook. 11 of those are minorities (mostly black but a couple of asians thrown in). That comes out to 12.9%.
I can't count (really, if I did this again, I'd get slightly different numbers), and I have way more FB friend than you, but here goes:
291 white 4 black 9 hispanic 47 asian (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Filipino) 18 brown (these are my Indian/Middle Eastern friends, I feel like they have a fundamentally different background from the people from East Asia. Some would check the white box, others the Asian/Pacific Islander box. The angry posts about Ferguson have come from folks with South Asian (i.e. Indian) heritage)
It's such an odd thing to do, as many of my friends are (white) foreign nationals (i.e. come to US themselves, not with their parent), and not all my friends are on Facebook (though being on Facebook not a race thing, really, it's a big data paranoia/misanthrope/I hate stalkers thing), and may of these people are only half of what I put them down as. I suspect I called more than one hispanic person white as well, and only did it if specific heritage came up in conversation.
I grew up in a white town, and now work in a very white city (there are jokes about it), but going to MIT for grad school is what pumps up my percentage to 20. Even so, I'd say there's a lot higher percentage of white people in my "more than just friends on Facebook list" or "haven't talked to in so long it's awkward". The two non-white people I count among the small number of active friends i have moved to the same city I did from MIT.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Your first objection was "moronic causality", which as far as I can tell you imagined, since the sorts of causes you mentioned that should have been accounted for were accounted for. You said the article blames the situation entirely on racism, which isn't true.
Part of the article does blame it on racism, the graphic and headline. You're misquoting me.
How am I misquoting you?
How does the headline blame racism?
I didn't say that "the article blames the situation entirely on racism". I didn't even imply that.
The name of the article is "Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friends" - This sensational bit of data doesn't even show up until three-quarters of the way through the article. - The actual data presented is "PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have 'entirely white social networks without any minority presence.' The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans." - So there are two bits of data being represented: the results of PRRI's "American Values Survey", and the result of their data-mining social networks. - The article is implying that only 25% of white people have ANY non-white friends. This is a lie. It would only be true if the statistical sample from the social network has a super-high correlation to a natural statistical sample in the real-world. How did they gather the social network data? Did Facebook grant them access to private data? Or was it only public profiles? Was it a statistically relevant sample size? Why would anyone be idiot enough to believe that social networking COULD generate a realistic, natural sample? - So, in the social network data, 75% of whites had no minority contacts and 65% of blacks have only black contacts. Why is the title just about white people? - The content of the title is essentially that most white people have NO minority friends. Is this not an implication that racism is involved? Is it not a blatant misrepresentation of the data?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Look, you can either complain about over-dramatics and arguing for arguing's sake, or you can post the way you're posting, Herblay. You can't do both.
Not without being a hypocrite anyway.
I never claimed NOT to be a hypocrite. But at least my logic is internally consistent. Unlike the article. Or certain other posters.
posted
Meanwhile, you say the title implies something other than what it says, while you claim you didn't say or even imply what you literally said.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I didn't say that "the article blames the situation entirely on racism", did I?
I offhandedly commented that the article IMPLIES that whites are racist. In the sensational title.
Do we need to dissect this? - "article blames ... entirely on racism" would mean that I stated that racism is the only cause. I didn't say that. - "because the whites are racist" is taken out of context. I was implying that the title inferred whites were racist. And I didn't say "ALL whites were racist", I said "ALL because the whites are racist". The first would have implied a single causal factor. What I said implied that it might be a single factor among many.
<waits for scifibum to split another hair and misquote me again>
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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Dude, you've been caught like three times in a five paragraph conversation flat-out contradicting yourself or the facts as to what the article says and doesn't say.
Given the attitude you're taking, a pedantic internet troll arguing over nothing is *precisely* what you are right now. To an extent that I'm wondering if this entire conversation is some sort of trolling.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Really? Name one time I've contradicted myself. Do it without misquoting me.
Nearly all of my comments had nothing to do with what the article said. They were in regard to what the headline itself implied. Look at my last dissection of scifibum's misquote.
God, I feel like I'm surrounded by third graders. Do you argue just to argue? Or are you exercising some strange OSC-related fantasy? "My name is Demosthenes. I have anchoring bias and cannot change my argument; even though I'm only half-reading this post, I'm well on my way to ruling the interwebs..."
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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I know you know what 'it's all because whites are racist' implies. It doesn't imply the sort of nuanced analysis you're implying. It implies what you flat-out stated. That the article, or the headline, or both, is blaming it "all on racism".
"I didn't say that "the article blames the situation entirely on racism". I didn't even imply that." & "But no ... it's all because the whites are racist. Cool."
You absolutely, 100% outright stated that the article was blaming the situation entirely on racism. It wasn't even an implication! Heh. I don't know why or even if you do expect people to take this nonsense seriously. I'm not even talking about whether you're right about the article.
But man, if you want to insist you didn't state it was due to racism, I think you skipped the step where you edit that exact statement out of your very first post. Remember, though! When you try and fail to execute these tedious shenanigans, be sure to sneer at everyone else for being childish. It is not in the least bit funny!
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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But, yeah. Look at San Diego and Tucson. There are parts of town that are 99% Hispanic. There are parts of town that are 95% white. And there are multicultural areas. - I will only look in the white or multicultural areas. - A person of color might have a similar view.
Is it because I'm a racist? Or is it that I want to shop at Target and have an English speaker cut my hair?
<shrug>
Side note: I did live in a predominantly Hispanic area of San Diego. It gets somewhat annoying when nobody in food service can speak English, when nobody at a hair salon can do a "white haircut".
You're hedging the question and by extension you're kind of not answering it
Predominantly black areas, for instance, exist where they do now because of discriminatory housing and loan policies that date back to
well
today
but even more blatantly so in the 1980's and prior
Black people live in where 'black people neighborhoods' are today primarily because those neighborhoods were established as black people areas by the real estate and bank interests that kept black homeowners locked there. I like it when it is explained as that it's mostly just a manifestation of that they like to live among 'their own kind' though. It is a telling myopia.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I took your dashes and numbered them, otherwise your post has been otherwise unaltered.
quote:Originally posted by Herblay:
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:Originally posted by Herblay:
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Your first objection was "moronic causality", which as far as I can tell you imagined, since the sorts of causes you mentioned that should have been accounted for were accounted for. You said the article blames the situation entirely on racism, which isn't true.
Part of the article does blame it on racism, the graphic and headline. You're misquoting me.
How am I misquoting you?
How does the headline blame racism?
I didn't say that "the article blames the situation entirely on racism". I didn't even imply that.
The name of the article is "Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friends" 1. This sensational bit of data doesn't even show up until three-quarters of the way through the article. 2. The actual data presented is "PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have 'entirely white social networks without any minority presence.' The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans." 3. So there are two bits of data being represented: the results of PRRI's "American Values Survey", and the result of their data-mining social networks. 4. The article is implying that only 25% of white people have ANY non-white friends. This is a lie. It would only be true if the statistical sample from the social network has a super-high correlation to a natural statistical sample in the real-world. How did they gather the social network data? Did Facebook grant them access to private data? Or was it only public profiles? Was it a statistically relevant sample size? Why would anyone be idiot enough to believe that social networking COULD generate a realistic, natural sample? 5. So, in the social network data, 75% of whites had no minority contacts and 65% of blacks have only black contacts. Why is the title just about white people? 6 The content of the title is essentially that most white people have NO minority friends. Is this not an implication that racism is involved? Is it not a blatant misrepresentation of the data?
1. So what? It shows up and is an important point of the article. 2. Not really seeing the problem here. 3. Okay. 4. I assume that mining social networks is a lot easier than asking people to accurately name their friends and the people they know. I couldn't do name everyone. Also, people lie if they know they are supposed to have an answer. Their facebook friendships were not altered in prep for the survey. Mining Facebook in this way totally legal and very easy. Facebook makes money any way it can. It's called "big data" If you are not paying for a service, you are the product. Farmville and those other stupid game apps have access to users' contacts.
I have friends who are not on Facebook, either because they never joined at a certain point in their lives and won't do it now don't care for big data. Or they removed their accounts out of fear of reprisal (teachers). The other people are probably too old to use tech. So sure, there is absolutely bias of who is on Facebook versus the population in general, but I suspect most of it has to do with Facebook's history as a college platform.
Most importantly, is each individual's peer group. If you are a fifty year old lady who just got your Facebook, you are going to tell your friends to join (I have teased my Facebookless friends mercilessly). Many won't, but I don't see as much racial divide. If you had to ask me to name a social network that people of other races instead of Facebook, I would name "weibo", but as far as I know, that's a thing for Chinese people who actually live in China. This study isn't about penpals. It's about Americans with other Americans they know IRL. Black people use Facebook and the internet. A study that says "75% of 20-somethings have no Facebook friends over 75" is a much stupider survey.
If someone tasked you with the problem of figuring out how mixed social circles are, Facebook is great imperfect way to start to get that answer. "What Facebook says about racial social circles" is, of itself an interesting survey.
5. The white statistic is, to me, the most interesting. Maybe because I'm white. I can see how the title loaded (if you just used black people), but why not lead with your most-exclusive group? Especially if most of your readership is white.
6. Whether the article put on kid gloves and tried not to imply racism is involved in the fact that 75% of white people have no minority Facebook friends, they reason they don't is racism. Not the really really bad stuff that went on fifty years ago, but still racism. The sharply divided housing patterns (someone else dig up the map for me, it's fascinating) we see today are absolutely and categorically an artifact of white flight and a refusal to sell apartments and houses to black families.
Some things heal overnight, others take generations. And yes, not being exposed to black people in neighborhood schools or their fancy jobs (economic disadvantages) means that white people still treat black people differently, as outsiders and acquaintances, not close friends. Even if they have problems with the idea of racism in principle. It's largely subconscious, but has been proven through experiments (beyond the scope of this particular reply, but if you send people the same essay to correct with either a picture a white kid or a black kid, the feedback is drastically difference).
I posted a link to a book you should read on the topic above-- Isabelle Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. It's a good book, and chronicles the mass migration of southern blacks from the plantations where their ancestors were enslaved to different northern cities at a time when almost no black people lived in the north. Read the book. Seriously. You will understand a lot more about how all of this works. You will also be able to recognize that certain situations (yes, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown) are absolutely the result of racism, including the things that both boys did that contributed to their deaths.
The fact that you keep digging in on this point shows how much you do not know about the entire topic.
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